With Love
by rippingbutterflywings
Summary: The gang tell their kids the stories of their favorite dates with each other. One-shot. AU/AH.


_Hi, guys! So, I was listening to the song "Love" by American Authors, and I got inspired to write this. It's really short, so sorry about that. Thank you to Katwood5 for beta'ing this even though it's super late! You're the best. :) Hope you like this despite its shortness! _

* * *

_**Clary**_

"What was your favorite date?"

She's looking at me with an expectant expression. She takes after me, my daughter; it's something Jace often says with affection in his voice and his eyes soft. And now she's fifteen.

"Both of you, I mean," my daughter says, jerking her chin in the direction of her father. "And you, too." She nods at Isabelle, Simon, Alec, and Magnus.

"Yeah!" says Isabelle's daughter, who is ten years old and barely knows what a date is. "Tell us all your stories."

Everyone nods at me, with Alec mumbling, "It's your daughter," low enough for only the adults to hear. This causes Magnus to jab his elbow into his husband's spine.

"Okay," I say with a sigh. I think about all the dates we've been on. "Okay, I have one. It was the day after our high school graduation."

_Jace lived in a huge house, but his parents were away that weekend, so I snuck over and stayed the entire time. The day right after graduation, he decided to have a two-people beach party. Naturally. Did I mention he lived on the beach? Literally on the beach. It was amazing._

_I brought my swimsuit, obviously. Jace and I watched the waves crash for hours, talking about everything and nothing at once._

_"Okay," he said to me. "Let's float."_

_"Float?" I looked at the vast ocean; I didn't know where it could take me. "You want me to float?"_

_"We'll hold hands and we won't get lost," he insisted, stripping off his shirt. With his shirt off, he could basically make me do whatever he wanted, and he damn well knew it._

_I took his hand and ran into the ocean, suddenly unafraid. I was a high school graduate and upcoming college student. I was going to major in Art and marry Jace, but the world seemed pretty scary. There I was, a single artist in a world with millions of people, trying to make something of myself while I fell in love with Jace. It was the most complicated thing, being unhappy with the endless possibilities (possibilities of failure as well as of success, of course) while also being hopelessly in love with him. But I made it work._

_We looked at the sky and let our bodies relax. The sky went from having fat, white clouds to having thin ones, to the colors of the sun blending in with the blue. We dried off afterwards, lying down on our towels just in time to watch the sunset. We stayed outside the whole time, as the stars popped out one by one, making the sky a freckled face._

_"Do you ever think about it?" Jace asked me._

_"About what?" I replied, even though I had a really good idea of what he was talking about._

_"The future."_

_Thought so. "I think that I could be an artist, and I could get married, but I don't think I let myself want those things too much."_

_"Married?"_

_Of course that was the only thing he registered. "Yeah. Possibly."_

_"Who do you wanna marry?" He sounded casual, but I knew him. We had been best friends since middle school, and we'd been dating for almost three years. "Anyone you know?"_

_I rolled my eyes. "Maybe."_

_"Who is it? Is it Simon?"_

_I didn't want him to freak out, though. "Could be."_

_"I wanna marry you," he blurted out._

_"And you will," I said to him._

_Three years later, we got married on that same beach._

I tell the kids the G-rated version of this. I leave out the sex we had after he said those words to me. I tell them that we swam and looked at the sky and decided to marry each other, and I hold that close to me.

My favorite date, and it wasn't even a date.

* * *

_**Jace**_

It's my turn. My favorite date with Clary.

I do what Clary did with hers and tell the kids the cutesy story of what happened that day seventeen years ago, but I still remember it for what it was.

_Clary, being an Art major, didn't make a lot of money. She was an Art teacher, working with little kids. She hated her job, hated the kids that touched her boob and left paint smeared all over her cute sweaters, her face, and sometimes her hair. She kept it short the entire time she worked as a teacher._

_I was doing a double major, which meant that I had an extra year of college. So we were living in a crappy apartment in New York City and we could barely pay the rent. It was winter, and it was freezing, and one day our heating system stopped working._

_It was hell._

_But also, kind of awesome._

_It was a Saturday, so neither one of us was busy. We just cuddled on the couch and watched_

_The Nanny and kissed sometimes. It was the one time in my entire college career that I remember feeling totally, completely at peace, because Clary was usually stressed and I was usually drowning in work. So, the one day that wasn't happening…that was the best day ever. It was our best date. We made Christmas cookies, even though I hate them, and she told me she was gonna quit her job (even though she didn't do that until the year after, when she got pregnant with our daughter), and it was just the easiest day we'd had in four years._

_It was also the day we set our wedding date: April 19, 2016._

* * *

_**Isabelle**_

"I apologize in advance if I say something inappropriate," I say, because, well, I'm not known to have a filter.

And then I start. My favorite date with Simon Lewis.

_Right before we decided to get married, Simon took me on a camping trip._

_"Are we there yet?" I whined. He'd told me that we were going to a very specific spot. He had a MAP._

_"Uh…no," he said, scratching the back of his head._

_It was starting to get dark, because he, of course, took forever to make sure we had everything ready. Also, I kind of overslept. But that was so not my fault._

_"Well, when are we gonna get there?" I tapped my foot impatiently. I wasn't good with nature. In fact, I hated nature. But I loved Simon._

_Simon scratched his head again; it was a nervous habit of his. "About that…"_

_"What?" I asked, panicking._

_"I think we might be lost."_

_I could have punched him in the face if I didn't need him to be conscious for the yelling that followed that confession._

_"Jesus!" he yelled, causing me to shut up. "I get it, okay? You're mad. You're super extremely pissed off. But it's almost completely dark, so here." He thrust the map into my hands. "You find the way."_

_I looked at the map. Of course, I found the way. When the skies were black and the moon was shining and the stars decorated the sky like pearls, we made it to the spot. It was beautiful: there was a lake, the sound of the water instantly soothing me. Admittedly, the whole thing was gorgeous._

_I whirled around. "Simon—"_

_He was on one knee. "I haven't officially asked yet."_

_Yep. That was the day Simon asked me to marry him, even with the disaster that had happened before. Even with the fight we'd had._

_And, of course, I said yes._

* * *

_**Simon**_

I'm grinning like an idiot. Of course Isabelle would tell that story. The thing is, it was pretty bad at the moment. With what happened that day, I wasn't even sure she was gonna say yes. But she said yes anyway.

Things are mostly never as bad as they seem at the time.

"That's also my favorite," I say with a half-apologetic shrug. "Next."

* * *

_**Alec**_

"Okay. My favorite date with Uncle Magnus."

_I was the most athletic of all of us._

_Isabelle had never really liked sports, and Max's idea of a sport was marathoning a book series. Magnus never really liked them, either, but I convinced him to go climb a small mountain with me once._

_We were on our honeymoon. We travelled a lot throughout the years—we still do—but this was special. Important. He wouldn't have agreed had we not just recently gotten married._

_We climbed the mountain. Of course, it was after Magnus broke a nail and pretty much had a heart attack over it, and after he had to stop to catch his breath a million times (have I mentioned Magnus doesn't exercise—ever?, and after he told me, "Alexander Gideon Lightwood, you understand that I am never doing this again, right?"_

_The view was spectacular. It was more than what people see in pictures. A photograph couldn't really capture the feeling of satisfaction after climbing the mountain—because yes, while I'd told Magnus it was small, it wasn't. It was wonderful and huge and I took a million pictures and told Magnus I loved him every two seconds._

_He looked happy, despite his supposed misery. I think he enjoyed watching me be as happy as I was that day. It was the day I got Magnus to climb a mountain and the day I realized I would never regret our marriage._

* * *

_**Magnus**_

"That's adorable," I tell Alec. "Makes mine seem far less interesting."

"What's yours?"

I grin. "The day you came out to your parents."

He groans, but I've said this story a billion times, and the words are rolling off my tongue before he can protest.

_We'd met while working for a law firm in New York City. It was pretty great, watching Alec become flustered at the thought of us doing the nasty. Because I did bring it up. A lot._

_We dated for a year before, finally, Alec decided to come out. It was one day at a huge work event. His parents were there, and all of our co-workers and closest friends, too. I was happy, oblivious to what my boyfriend was planning._

_It took me by surprise when he asked me to go on stage with him. I thought it was weird—but, then again, it was Alec. He was—and still is—the very definition of weird._

_We went onstage, and he tapped the microphone. He said, "I have something to announce." He sounded slightly drunk, and I didn't even register his lips crushing against mine in front of hundreds of people until some of them started to clap and my boyfriend broke the kiss. _

"It's short," I say, "but that's what happened."

"It was embarrassing," Alec says, his head in his hands.

"It was brave," I reassure him, wrapping my arms around him. "It was only four years ago, which is why he's still kind of embarrassed about it. Even though everyone's forgotten. _Even_," I emphasize the word, "your parents."

"Whatever."

"So yeah, kids," I go on. "Those are our favorite dates."

The kids are silent for a second before Clary's daughter "awwws" and Isabelle's ten-year-old says, "Those are the worst dates EVER" before storming off to play with our eight-year-old twins.

* * *

_Let me know what you guys think! xo_


End file.
